Detachment Parenting: 33 Ways to Keep Your Cool When Kids Melt Down

By Heidi Smith Luedtke

Do you marvel at the patience and poise of your child’s preschool teacher and secretly wish you could act with the same calm demeanor? Now you can.

Detachment Parenting allows you to break out of fight-or-flight mode and respond mindfully, even when emotions run high. This practical book shows you how to:

• Stay calm when kids are out of control
• Engage kids in helpful discussions of intense emotional issues
• Coach kids to understand and manage their own moods
• Be confident that you can handle emotional crises, and
• Feel better about yourself as a person and as a parent

Written by a personality psychologist and mom of two young kids, Detachment Parenting presents smart solutions to one of the most challenging aspects of parenthood: Responding to kids’ emotions. It’s packed with 33 strategies you can use right away. You'll discover simple ways to change course in the heat of the moment – when you’re about to lose your cool – and learn how to guide emotional discussions so kids feel valued and validated.

Detachment Parenting teaches you how to spot emotional triggers and patterns, and find ways to respond without overreacting. Tips for maintaining a healthy emotional climate will help you increase your emotional energy reserves so you can give more of yourself and feel more fulfilled.

Armed with these simple stay-cool strategies, you'll be prepared for whatever kid chaos comes next.

When you buy the book, you’ll be eligible to download a printable Calm-Mom Techniques Poster FREE. It’s a useful visual reminder of how to keep your cool while you help kids handle their emotions. To get your free-download link, simply email your book receipt to poster at HeidiLuedtke.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9780988371408

Book preview

Detachment

Parenting

Detachment

Parenting

33 ways to keep your cool

when kids melt down

Heidi Smith Luedtke, Ph.D.

DETACHMENT PARENTING

Copyright © 2012 by Heidi Smith Luedtke, Ph.D.

Cover image by Chris Fertnig

(fertnig.photoshelter.com)

Cover design by Melanie Hooyenga at Inkslinger Designs

www.inkslingerdesigns.com

Interior formatting by Natasha Fondren at the eBook Artisans

www.ebookartisandesign.com

Author photograph by Sara Kuecher

www.saskuecherphotography.com

Please respect the author’s work. Do not share or forward this book, or reproduce any portion by any means, without the expressed written permission of the author or publisher. All rights reserved.

Edition: October 2012

You Are Not Alone

As a mom of two small kids, I know how hard it can be to stay calm when the kids melt down. My own 25-pound 2-year-old can push all my hot buttons in less time than it takes to put breakfast on the table. Her older brother threw the mother of all hissy fits in our neighborhood supermarket…on Mother’s Day. More than once I’ve felt like a failure as a mom because I said something snarky when I should have given my child a hug instead. If you feel like you’re at your wits end, I promise you this: I’ve been where you are.

I’m lucky to have spent most of my professional life studying psychological research and techniques that address these challenges, and I’ve distilled key lessons in the detachment parenting approach. The strategies I describe in this book are designed to help you increase positive emotions, minimize stress, and stay engaged with your kids. When you use them in your everyday family interactions, you’ll strike a balance between tending to feelings and taking action, what psychologists call emotion- and problem-focused coping.

Rest assured, detachment parenting is not the opposite of attachment parenting. It doesn’t require you to deny your feelings, keep kids at arms’ length or let them cry it out when they’re distressed. That kind of disengagement couldn’t possibly teach kids the emotion-regulation skills they need to be happy and healthy. Detachment parenting does not prescribe choices about how you feed, cuddle or care for your kids. Breastfeeding, baby-wearing, co-sleeping parents can use these techniques. So can bottle-feeding, stroller-pushing, sleep-scheduling parents. The detachment parenting approach rests solely on this core belief: Parents are best able to nurture and guide their children’s development when they respond to kids’ concerns with calm sensitivity, not frantic overwhelm.

I hope you put these techniques to work right away and that the skills you build help you achieve the level-headed, loving parenting style you want. Please reach out and share your successes. I’d love to hear how Detachment Parenting helped you realize more peaceful, productive interactions with your kids.

You can learn more about my work, read current articles, or submit questions or comments on my website, www.HeidiLuedtke.com. I’d be happy to answer your questions on my blog, where you — and others — can get inspiration, insight and support. We’re in this together.

About This Book

Detachment Parenting will show you how to:

Stay calm when kids are out of control

Engage kids in helpful discussions of intense emotional issues

Coach kids to understand and manage their own moods

Be confident that you can handle emotional crises, and

Feel better about yourself as a person and as a parent

In this book, you’ll access the same self- and relationship-regulation strategies child development experts use to preserve a level-headed, nurturing demeanor, and learn to apply them in your own home.

Emotions are contagious; we catch them from our kids. And when that happens, it’s easy to overreact. Detachment parenting is a mindset and a skillset. It allows you to